> I think there are some things that could be done that would help
> everyone. One that comes to mind is simply encouraging sub-setting
> a font when it's embedded on the web. I have been told that
> sub-setting is disallowed by some (many?) font licenses.
I think you're referring to the fact that there is a bit in the embedding field (fsType) of TrueType and OpenType fonts that can be set to say "do not subset." Very very few fonts use it - I'd say a lot fewer than 1% of all fonts.
Subsetting has obvious size advantages, with potential cost to editability of the text the font is being used with. But for new-era typefaces that support lots of different writing systems, most users could toss out all the writing systems they don't use and shrink the font size dramatically.
What would also be helpful at web-font-authoring time would be the capacity to subset OpenType layout tables as well. That is, intelligently re-compile the layout features to get rid of the stuff referring to glyphs that are no longer in the font. This is a fairly complex operation, unfortunately.
Regards,
T